Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Dr. StrangeGlove

I can't decide if it's a hygienic practicality or a new depth of vanity, but I've started wearing latex gloves at work. I noticed after my first few weeks that my cuticles were getting into a hell of a state, and it occurred to me that the high volume of paper-handling I do is what was drying them out; besides, the more paper you push in a given day, the greater your chances of getting paper-cuts, and my fingers looked like I'd been attacked by pixies wielding tiny knives.

So one day last week, disgusted with my hands, I went and got a good manicure during my lunch break; and on the way back to the office, I bought a box of latex surgical gloves, and started wearing them when I do my literature fulfillments and kit-builds (AKA envelope-stuffing and manual collating). And now, after a week of latex gloves and incessant lotioning, my hands look fabulous!

It's also kind of fun pretending to be a CSI while I'm wearing my gloves, like I'm Greg Sanders sifting through terribly important evidence. Or I pretend that I'm mailing letter-bombs ("here's one for Fred Phelps snickersnickersnicker, here's one for the Bush family snickersnickersnicker, here's one for Madonna snickersnickersnicker...). Or I don't pretend anything, I just do my work and hum along to the music on my headphones (showtunes and disco, natch). I wonder, though, if the other people in the office think I've gone quite mad... surgical gloves aren't the usual accessory in the cubicled halls of Finance.

I also wonder if it's normal to be sexually excited by the scent of latex. One of these days, someone is going to come into my cubicle and catch me sniffing my gloved fingers and moaning softly, fantasizing about biting my dentist. Though they are more likely to find me pushing air-bubbles around on the backs of my hands, fascinated by the sensation of the latex sticking to and separating from my sweat-soaked skin (the gloves I bought are a little too small, One Size Fits All my ass), chasing the bubbles around to my palm or up to my wrist or out to my fingertips... it's very distracting sometimes.

And now I wonder if perhaps I've shared a little too much information. Oh, well, it surely cannot surprise you, my faithful reader, to discover that I am a freak.

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